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The Amazing Mazer - A New Poem by Ben

October is tinted green, blue, violet, tan,to
accommodate the pedestrian,who leaves the starlight of the city's
windows,to wander past the shops that evenings close,on his way home,
beneath the roaring el,where leaves swirl in the air, this side of
hell.A million visages, a million words,of advertising copy,
conversationsheard in
the street, or heard in railway stations,invade the heart, informing its
desirefor privacy, for lying in the dark,and emanating magically
higher,up through the tinted light, the falling leaves,high up past
violet Venus's lone spark,where moonlight settles on the snow-white
evesof certain quaint restrictions, four mute walls,the in between state
of the darkened halls:to say, I'm mine. I am the one I am.Let Archimedes
fall on swift, dull Priam.Let stars be rockets, stir audible Tyre.The
glittering mastodon is all for hire,and Jesus speaks, and Franklin, and
Rousseau,illuminated there, with piercing echo.Spread out across the
vagrant orchard trees,the cellar that the spider only sees,with apple
smells, an Indian Summer breeze,alerts the senses, lone in suppositionof
ecstasy in very high position.But Dante goes. The orange trees are too
real,to hope exemplify the nuptial pealof separate strangers, who align
in tenses,past tick tock clocks that time the sleeping senses.The
morning shall stand proud, lit in the hall,or huddling on street corners,
clutching bundles,a brokerage of lassitude and thrall,of portraits on a
terra cotta wall,beside the phone that rings and shakes the candy,the
pencils and the paper that are handy.The day is jubilant, and all are
free,to ice skate in the park, or sit beneath a tree,although we meet
back here for lunch at three.Never mind that dinner is at seven,or that
each one aspires to his own heaven.Let darkness gather round the
radio;let each feel all, but tell not what they know.The world war has
begun. Just so. Just so.

poem by Ben Mazer copyright 2013; published with permission of the author.

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